


Not So Weightless

by truelovetakesawhile



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Pain, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), Teeth, main course hurt side dish comfort, where is krolia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27164413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/truelovetakesawhile/pseuds/truelovetakesawhile
Summary: Keith begins to change, but hates the reminder that he isn't human. He decides to ignore the pain as it gets worse. And worse. And worse.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 188





	Not So Weightless

It started with his eyes, so it didn’t hurt, not at first.

During training he’d find it hard to focus, gaze tracking just a moment too late as if his eyes needed to adjust to something that wasn’t there. As if they were figuring things out too slowly. The lag threw him off enough to leave him with more bruises than usual whenever he finally gave in, fuming, and ended a training sequence. It earned him concerned looks from Shiro whenever they sparred together and Keith failed to block a hit Shiro hadn’t intended to land. There were lectures from Allura, grumbling rants from Lance, whenever his timing was off during group training.

And those moments were . . . strange, too. In their own way.

They’d face off against the gladiators and Keith would freeze, would falter, would make a _stupid_ mistake, all because he’d think he saw a flash of yellow reflecting back at him, dashing across a gladiator’s metal skin. Even when Hunk and his bright armor was nowhere nearby, even when Keith realized none of the lights gave off that sort of glow. 

It left his skin tingling, his fingertips numb, and he would have said something to Shiro—he would have brought it up, honestly—but their next exercise had Coran plunging the training room into darkness. The better to work together in unfamiliar surroundings; the better to overcome unexpected obstacles in lethal situations.

And Keith could . . . see.

Not well. Not perfectly. But he spotted the smudged outlines of movement whenever his friends took a new position, or if the barriers that’d risen across the ground shifted into new formations they were meant to avoid running into. Keith could step back from all of them, could stop Pidge right before she almost literally ran into him. Could block a shot fired from one of the sensors on the walls, aimed for him, then Hunk, then the others as they slowly gathered together in the shadows.

That’s all they were, surrounding him. Shadows. Coran had said the room would be dark, darker than something Keith hadn’t really understood enough to appreciate the comparison, but he’d taken it for pitch black. Maybe Coran had been exaggerating. He tended to do so whenever he got excited about something.

“You did great back there, Keith. Way to pay attention and look out for your team,” Shiro grinned, clasping him on the shoulder before Lance waltzed over to sling an arm around them both. 

“Yeah, mullet, I don’t know how you managed to save my skin back there. You didn’t cheat, did you?” Lance asked, leaning close and narrowing his eyes before he laughed, hard, immediately dismissing the idea. 

“It really wasn’t that hard,” Keith said, ducking out from underneath Lance’s grip and sighing when Lance held out his arms again, threatening to come closer. “It _wasn’t_!”

“Are you, like, trying to teach me to be humble or something?” Lance asked.

But Keith didn’t mind the teasing or the praise, or Lance’s increased insistence that _he’d_ be best at whatever exercise they’d work on the next day. Because he’d proven that his eyes were _fine_. That he could see fine, and nothing was wrong, and so there was nothing to say about it to the others, because there was nothing to worry about. They clearly hadn’t noticed anything wrong with him, either.

\- - -

It continued with his bones. At first Keith thought he’d been training too hard, but that didn’t make much sense; he’d trained harder, longer, when they’d first found themselves defending the universe. Then Shiro had realized how many hours Keith spent in the training room and had convinced Coran to install some kind of lockout sequence that’d initiate after a set amount of time. Keith hadn’t been able to bribe Pidge into overriding it. Not yet.

He’d wake with his joints complaining and at first, a short stretch in the morning relieved the ache beneath his skin. Then the pain came, the real pain, stabbing streaks of fire emanating from his shins, his wrists, tracking down his spine. If he walked down the hall too quickly. If he sat still for too long during one of their team _bonding experiences_ , aka Altean movie nights. The others would curl up under blankets, leaning against one another, resting after a long day. Keith, though—Keith would be busy counting down the minutes, trying to shift often enough to keep his body alert. Limber. Whole. Waving away Hunk’s offers of extra blankets when he thought Keith’s restlessness was from a different sort of discomfort.

And each evening, after the others had tucked into their rooms, after Allura gave them the itinerary for the next day, Keith would lay awake in bed. He’d hope that he’d be able to ignore it, the way his body had begun to betray him.

Then his legs would twitch involuntarily, heels digging into the soft mattress. His head jerked, pressing back against his pillow while his fingers dug downward—gripping the sheets so tightly that each morning he inspected them, afraid they’d end up torn. There were never any marks on his skin, there was never any _reason_ for the pain. No physical representation of what he could _feel_ there. Like his entire skeleton was falling apart.

It wasn’t constant. It had to be in his head, and it had to be something he could get over on his own, because they were in the middle of a war and there was no time for the others to spare for a few . . . pulled muscles. Overworked limbs. Whatever.

He continued telling himself it didn’t matter, even though it became harder and harder to remain quiet. When he stood too quickly and might have made an odd noise, glaring at Hunk’s concerned glance. When he took a little too long to get back to his feet during a fight. When Red purred concern into his thoughts because his hands were too stiff, fingers curled and bent for a handful of minutes after flying. It hurt too much to straighten them out. It . . . everything hurt.

He staggered back to his room to the staggered rhythm of his pain, each footstep demanding his full attention. Bundled himself inside, too quickly, because he’d seen the way the others had stared and _knew_ they wanted to say something. Probably that he wasn’t good enough. That he needed to pull himself together. He _knew_ that already—knew it as he stared into the mirror above his sink, at the dark half-moons like bruises gathering beneath his eyes. He needed to sleep. He should have been more grateful for his old body, the one that hadn’t ached, that didn’t have faltering eyesight.

He just needed to hold himself together until this, whatever it was, ended.

\- - -

So, all things considered, his jaw shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But he was distracted by what was going on with his eyes, with his bones, so Keith couldn’t pinpoint when exactly it started to hurt to eat. There was no distinct line for any of this: fine one day and hurting the next. No, it was something worse—something slow, insidious, crawling forward one painful, inexorable step at a time.

Maybe it was because they usually ate food goo, or at least he did, whenever he couldn’t hold himself together long enough to share a meal with the other Paladins. To pull himself into the shape of a well-functioning person had been difficult even before _this_. Keith wasn’t antisocial, not really. Not always. He just didn’t know _how_ to be social, and Shiro understood that. Maybe he’d said something to the others too, because although they didn’t pressure Keith to join them quite as often, their invitations never ended, either.

But this—biting into something Hunk had made from ingredients gifted to them by a liberated planet—made Keith want to fall apart. It made him want to smash his plate against the side of the table, to curl his hands into fists, to howl at the universe for the _unfairness_ of it all. Each shift of his jaw was agony; each motion made him feel for his chin, because it seemed like at any moment his bones would break and he’d crack to pieces. There in their dining room. Over dinner.

He ate, because he knew leaving his plate mostly full would offend Hunk. Worse, it’d concern him, and then the others would pile on with questions Keith wasn’t even ready to consider. He’d probably ground his teeth together too hard the night before, restless up into the small hours of the morning, cold and angry and wishing, almost wishing, his legs would fall off just because then there was a chance the pain would stop.

Then it wouldn’t mean . . .

Keith ate, and he ignored it when the delicious, savory taste of the meal became tinged with iron. He kept his mouth shut, quiet as usual, helping the others clear the table. He didn’t think about how it felt like his bones were slowly grinding to nothing with each step he took. He thought about nothing at all, a blur of white noise and determination, until he was able to lock himself into his room once more.

Something close to a whimper escaped him. It was pathetic. It felt like ages before Keith made it across the room, across the floor, to the bathroom. He huddled over the sink, peering into the mirror that showed disheveled hair and shadowed eyes. Pulling back his lips, another noise broke free. 

His gums bled when he pressed against them, scarlet gathering between his teeth.

He spat blood into the sink and held himself there, neck bowed. One of his teeth had felt too loose, when he’d moved his lips. 

He thought about the communication device sitting on his bedside table and how his mother would answer if he called.

And then he made his way slowly, horribly, to his bed, and shut the device into a drawer.

He ignored it, as he’d done with everything that’d been happening to him. He ate less. He tried to avoid looking at himself in the mirror.

\- - -

And then his temper went. 

It’d already been hard for Keith to cling to civility, which usually resulted in folded arms and angry glares and misunderstanding when the others thought he purposefully wanted to be aloof, apart, but he couldn’t figure out a way to be otherwise without wanting to tear out his hair. 

Except, now, that’d changed, melting slowly toward a rage that made him want to hit walls and break mirrors. Fight harder during training. Take his meals to his room, always, first so the others wouldn’t see how little he ate, each bite agony that brought tears to his traitorous eyes. Secondly because he didn’t know when he was going to go off. Each moment of restraint left his hands shaking, his heart pounding louder and louder and _louder_ in his chest, in his ears, until he could hear nothing past the noise within him telling him to fight—

To win—

To crush _something_ as a way of expressing the horrible pooling _guilt_ and frustration and rage and _pain_ in his gut. His room started to look more like the shack in the desert, on Earth, when he’d been _alone_ , in that everything was in disrepair. The sink chipped. Mirror cracked. Even his bed slumped from throwing himself down on it too hard. His walls scratched, because he’d realized they could really withstand a direct blow from his knife. The nights he couldn’t sleep, every night, instead of writhing in his broken bed, he’d stab at the wall, over and over and over, sparks flying. Tension pulling his muscles taut.

And, inside, beneath the anger, beneath it all, the hopeless, despairing thought that this would never end. Because no matter what he did, how he moved or what he broke, he never felt any better.

He felt too much to comprehend a time _before_ , when he hadn’t exactly been happy, but . . . Shiro had understood him. The other Paladins hadn’t shied away from him. Now, they tended to flinch back, as if they were afraid he’d cut them down verbally, or . . . do something worse.

Didn’t they understand?

Didn’t they know that was what Keith feared, too?

\- - -

“Keith? Keith, are you listening?”

It felt like whenever he assumed there wasn’t any part of him left to grind down to nothing, the universe was determined to prove him wrong.

“Shiro, do you think we should get Coran? He looks like he’s . . . He’s . . .”

Every sound was a little blade, wriggling, cutting its way through his ears. He’d felt off, dizzy, unbalanced when he’d woken that morning from the few hours of sleep he’d managed, but Keith hadn’t realized how bad it really was, until he’d found the others.

“Yeah, Lance, get Coran. Tell him to send a message to Krolia, too.”

He’d suffered through breakfast, claiming to have already eaten in his room. Allura had read out their schedule for the day and Keith had been tempted to snap his chair in half. He thought he’d only made it to the first thing on the schedule—just a briefing in the lounge. Something he should have been able to do half-asleep.

“That’s it. Keep breathing just like that for me. Can you loosen your grip a little?”

But her voice had been so _loud_ and then the others had chimed in with their corrections to the strategy she’d suggested. And then Keith had realized he had no idea what mission they were talking about, where they were even going—where in the universe they _were_ , and how was he supposed to fly Red like this? There’d been an argument about something, something stupid—the kind of argument that hadn’t really been a fight at all, because Lance had been grinning and Hunk laughing while Pidge pretended to fume.

“Just a little, bud. You’re holding on too tight.”

And then Keith had just . . . 

“Keith. Let go.”

He’d grabbed the datapad he didn’t remember being given and stood, ignoring the questioning noises that felt like worse than a migraine, worse than lightning, dashing across his mind. Stabbing into his brain.

And then he’d thrown the datapad against the wall, but even the miniature rain of broken glass hadn’t felt satisfying. It’d only made the voices louder. So he’d hunched over, palms over his ears, trying to make it stop, make it all stop, make it quiet—

There were warm hands on his, trying to pry his fingers from where they’d sunk into his hair. And he just—he couldn’t—it would never—

“Stop,” Keith protested, shoving the hands off as he felt something give way in his mouth. He hesitated, faltered, froze—and then he moved to his feet before Shiro could grab for him again. He ran, past Pidge calling after him, past Lance and Coran in the hall. To his room, slapping the scanner to open the door quickly, stumbling across the floor to his bathroom. Just in time, to spit into the cracked sink. Blood and saliva and a tooth, pearly white and whole, the canine glistening where it’d settled in the basin.

_No no no no—_

“Here, Keith.”

_No._

He realized he hadn’t heard the door to his room slide shut because Shiro had come running after him. Followed him. Eased inside before Keith could lock him out, again, like he’d done to all of them even since this, _this_ , whatever it was, had started.

Shiro held out a glass of water he’d pulled from Keith’s nightstand, but Keith turned his chin away. Poking with his tongue, he could already feel a new tooth pressing forward, sharp enough to prick. Other teeth felt loose, precarious, uncertain in his mouth.

“Go away,” Keith mumbled, hardly wanting to move his jaw, his lips. Hardly wanting to hear himself speak.

“No,” Shiro said in a blessedly quiet whisper, with the kind of certainty that meant he’d respond the same way a thousand times over. “We—we knew something was going on with you, but . . . God, Keith. You didn’t need to go through any of this alone.”

He thought about what it must look like—the broken chaos in his room, the blood. The way his hands shook where he gripped the sink.

“I don’t—I don’t want—” Keith could hardly pull his thoughts to order, let alone speak. “I don’t want this. I don’t . . . I don’t—”

“I know,” Shiro said, softly. He made Keith take a drink to wash out some of the blood. He made him stand still as he gently wiped streaks of it from his chin. “But you need to give us a chance to help you.”

“I just want it to stop,” Keith said. He felt _tired_ , in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to feel while he’d been on his own. Which hadn’t just been _this_ , this moment in time, but . . . years. Starting way back on Earth. “I want it to stop.”

“And we’ll figure this out together,” Shiro said. Keith realized he was being led out of his room, into another—a bed that was whole and unbroken for him to lay on. “Krolia is on her way. She’s advised Coran on a few medications that might make you more comfortable, until . . . And if they’re not good enough, we’ll take turns sitting with you. Waiting this out with you. Together.”

_Together?_

And waiting it out, that meant . . . 

“You’ve probably already gone through the worst of it on your own,” Shiro said. “Krolia said something about how she should have expected this. You’re both too stubborn, you—you really thought . . . But she’d thought—she’d hoped you wouldn’t have to . . . Well, there isn’t much research out there about Galra _and_ humans, so really she and Coran only have other, uh, circumstances to work from . . .”

Keith’s brow furrowed, even though it sent a stab of pain through his head, even though a frown pulled at his sore mouth.

“But I’m . . . I’m becoming more like—like . . . You don’t . . . mind?” Keith asked, and he wasn’t really sure of what he was trying to say, but he got the vague impression then that if he hadn’t looked so pitiful then Shiro would have hugged him tight.

“Mind? Keith, you’re part of our family, and you’re hurting. It doesn’t matter if this is a Galra-thing. It’s a . . . Keith-thing. We’re here for you,” Shiro said, and when he pressed his lips together, looking like he was holding something back, Keith nudged his side. “I can’t wait to see what the fangs look like.”

And Keith rolled his eyes, which didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought it would, and Shiro chuckled to himself, low in his chest, and for a moment it felt . . . less.

It felt like _before_.

And it made Keith feel like maybe it would be alright, in the end. Even if he wasn’t sure what the end of _this_ would look like.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday Keith! I've wanted to play around with this idea for a while--what if, as he grew older, Keith started to show more Galra features. Nothing too crazy, but it seemed like something that would be painful, and then . . . this happened. Please let me know what you think! I'd love to get your thoughts!
> 
> As always, you can find me over on [tumblr](http://imreadingabook.tumblr.com)!


End file.
